My wife’s iPhone XR was lost/stolen. Somehow Find My iPhone was disabled. How was this done with FaceID and passcode required for access? Carrier has blocked IMEI so it’s essentially a brick at this point, as best I can tell.

The Economist: America’s social-media addiction is getting worse:

FACEBOOK users in America spend about 42 minutes a day on the social-media platform.

I’m so happy not to be an active user of the Facebook platform anymore. Ditching it and Twitter has salvaged much time.

The Boys on Prime Video is worth watching. Funny, gruesome and thought-provoking all in one.

Stoicism

It seems I can’t spend any time on the Internet at the moment without coming across insights, thoughts and video on the philosophy of stoicism.

While this could be a product of frequency bias, I claim some modicum of defence because I learned about stoicism in detail in 2011 during my time studying at the Cranlana Colloquium.

I have enjoyed rediscovering and reminding myself of the stoic philosophy. It’s a mental model that makes sense to me and can help ward off the feeling of helplessness in a complex and not entirely well-functioning or well-governed world.

The Stoic Manifesto

Stoics attempt to be guided by logic and reason rather than fleeting worldly gratification. The practice of Stoicism supposedly allowed people to lead more peaceful, rational lives.

A Stoic and a… Romantic?A Stoic and a… Romantic?

I appreciate the stoic’s view of the world, as long as it doesn’t veer too far into fatalism1. I’ve always favoured the concept of logical thought (i.e. Doctor Spock) ahead of irrational behaviour (i.e. Captain Kirk). Yet because I’m not Vulcan, I often fail to live up to the ideals of stoicism. Let’s call it a work in progress. When I prevail in taking the stoic approach I find myself less riddled with stress and anxiety, and am generally happier about my lot in life.

Boiling It Down

The easy 1, 2, 3 of stoicism may be presented as:

  1. If you can change it, it doesn’t deserve your worry. Go ahead and make the change. Just do it!
  2. If you can’t change it, it doesn’t deserve your worry. You can’t fix it, so why stress?2
  3. If you worry about it anyway, you are simply inviting it to tyrannise and traumatise you, indefinitely. Rumination is the worst.

  1. I don’t like the idea of stoicism being used as a argument in favour of ‘do nothing’ for monumental challenges, such as climate change. I can’t change the heating climate directly, but I can make active changes such as shopping smarter, flying less, and being generally responsible. Other individuals can do more, dependent on their position in society. It’s not a free pass to do nothing.↩︎

  2. The Alfred E. Neuman approach: “What, me worry?”↩︎

My thanks to the flu which has enabled me to sleep night and day for the past three days. 😷

OmniGroup Adopting Apple’s Standard iOS Document Browser

And the people rejoiced!

I’ve just bought and installed Better on macOS and iOS. I’ve used 1BlockerX until now, but I’m interested to see if this other app is, indeed, Better.

I’m nearing the end of my MailMate trial, and I think it’s going to be a case of “take my money”. It’s really good.

I’m experimenting with disabling Fastmail spam filtering, and instead using SpamSieve on my Mac.

This game was a lot of fun.

There are a few things I don’t like about MailMate but there are many things I do. I imagine I will end up buying a license at the end of my trial period.

Day One has embedded itself into my life. I’ve been writing in it since November 2011 and have over 1,500 entries. That must be the longest contiguous piece of work I’ve created.

Into the Personal-Website-Verse · Matthias Ott:

Whenever you stumble upon an interesting thought on another site, write about it and link to it.

I stumbled across this article, and I liked it. It outlines why the IndieWeb should really just be the web.

As a result of finding this article on this website, I’ve subscribed to its RSS feed, so I’ll automatically get future content delivered to me. This is what makes the open web so great.

Achieve a state of flow. Nek minnit, have to stop to go to a meeting.

My iPad has been hit by that weird bug where Spotlight search slows to a crawl. After attempting random voodoo solutions, I’ve now gone for the nuclear erase and restore option.

I’m experimenting with the iOS app, Secure Shellfish, for SSH/SFTP. It works great, but I don’t really have a need for it.

Early morning park play.

I have upgraded my micro.blog account from monthly to annual payments. A no brainer deal!

I’ve bought Calendar Paste for iOS to see if it will help with time blocking. First downside - no iCloud sync, which feels like table stakes these days.

A Guide to Using YNAB to Support NDIS Self-Managed Budgeting

As a self-managed user of Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) it is necessary to budget, account for, and forecast expenditure over the 12-month period of the funding agreement.

The typical way to do this budgeting would be with a spreadsheet, laid out in the typical fashion with columns of months and rows of accounts. This is how I assumed I would do it. Yet as I got stuck into the job of building my spreadsheet I realised how much I no longer enjoy working in spreadsheets.

My feelings for ExcelMy feelings for Excel

For a period of my early career, Excel was life. But that was a different time, and a different me. I ain’t got no time for Excel now. I’m over it.

Leveraging Ynab

What I do have is a subscription to YNAB which happens to be the most effective personal budgeting tool I have ever used.

I thought it would be worthwhile to see if I could extract more value from my YNAB subscription by creating a budget specifically for managing NDIS expenditure.

My Venn DiagramMy Venn Diagram

This is a niche solution for a niche problem. The Venn Diagram of people who are self-managed participants of the NDIS and use YNAB must be vanishingly small. But perhaps, one of those people might stumble across this post and find it helpful.

Build the Framework

The following is a guide explaining how YNAB can be configured to support the budgeting and accounting tasks associated with a self-managed NDIS plan.

  1. Create a new YNAB budget file specifically for NDIS budgeting and expenditure.
  2. Within that budget, create Category Groups to match relevant NDIS funding descriptors.
  3. Within the Category Groups built at Step 2, create Categories for each service provider expected to be used through the life of the NDIS Plan.[^Remember that more providers can be added later, if necessary, so no pressure to get this completely accurate at the start.]
  4. Create On-Budget Accounts for each of the relevant NDIS support budgets.[^There are three potential budgets: core budget, capacity building budget, and capital budget.] The NDIS requires that funding be expended for the purpose it is granted, so the creation of specific accounts prevents leakage across allocations.
  5. Inflow the funding received from the NDIS for each support budget into its associated YNAB account. This will become the starting balance from which to budget for the year.

Well done, your YNAB framework is ready!

Establish and Run the Budget

Now, you can build your budget using the standard YNAB approach of giving each dollar a job, but in the context of NDIS expenditure.

Based on quotes, service agreements and your own preference, allocate your total NDIS budget value across your service providers. Ensure that the subtotal for each Category Group matches the sum allocated to its YNAB account.

As services are delivered and invoices paid, input them as expenses within the relevant account (Core Supports/Capacity Building/Capital), assigning the supplier as the YNAB Payee, and the Category as the relevant provider you created as a Category. This is hard to explain, but easy to do.

For bonus points, you can choose to highlight the cleared icon once a rebate is received from the NDIS back into your transaction account.

The Result

Following these steps will leave you in the enviable position of having up-to-date figures that can readily display:

You also gain full access to the YNAB reports to more deeply analyse your expenditure should you wish.

Notes